The Old Man Next Door I Never Saw

"There is a very scary atmosphere to this image so we used the old trick of delivering music that was innocent and cute, knowing that this would heighten the dark side of the picture. We thought that the use of tinkly, mechanical sounds would evoke a feeling of childhood and also it could be the voice of some strange mechanical contraption that the old man uses inside his building for unknown, possibly sinister reasons. It's all very creepy really and fun to do."

(Also) Interpreted by John Birmingham

I thought I recognised the building in Old Man Next Door as soon as I saw it. Or maybe just the memories and sense loss it evoked. Was it from Bondi Beach, I wondered, where I lived for so long, and which I still miss now, years after I left.

Staring at the piece on my computer, I couldn't help imagining the ocean in front of that place. You couldn't see it, but in my mind it was there, all the time. The crunch of the waves drifting up through the closed windows, the sun baking the blank facade. Steam would rise up from your footprints as you fire walked across the cracked, concrete driveway.

Writing about an image like that was easy. I simply closed my eyes and imagined myself there again, living a different life. One without commitments or demands.

It's no mansion, but this place, these sorts of places, they promise a life of ease. A sort of ease anyway, where the rhythm of the day is measured in tides and swells, and the whole world contracts to small space, a village sitting at the edge of the ocean. The same, elegiac tone invested Verdict in Pale Pink (No.5) for me. The two figures standing on the handkerchief deck are looking over my bay, feeling my sun on their faces. Writing about them meant simply writing about myself.